Wednesday 11th - A Place in the Sun!

We’ve done it! We are now owners of a charming little French apartement in an equally charming little French town. After a decade of talking about it, we have actually gone ahead and done it, and we are so pleased. We must say that we really didn’t expect that our minimal budget would allow us to get what we wanted, and NEVER thought that Céret would be a possibility. However, we can see that the place we have found will turn out to be superb with time and effort, and we are so looking forward to getting stuck in.

Slept reasonably well, Laroque’s all-night clocks not disturbing us (nor the duplicate rings 2 minutes after the 1^st). Updated the blog then headed back to Céret where we made our normal tomato/cheese/red pepper baguette for lunch, then went to our “usual”, Bar Pablo, for coffee and to check the internet. Again our new mate Denis turned up and we spent a good half hour chatting with us. He wanted to give us some advice about our pending purchase – his price was that we had to buy him a coffee J. He said the real estate agent had offered “our” apartment to a friend of his on Saturday, i.e. the day AFTER our “intent to purchase” had supposedly been accepted. We had been assured by the real estate agent that this meant the place was ours, as the vendor could not accept any other offer. However, as we now know, the vendor had not actually signed our offer.

Denis is quite an amazing character. We are not quite sure how much of his bravado is bluff and how much is his boisterous nature but he is really fun and very colourful (literally – he left some pink paint on John’s trousers!). He had just whipped up a painting in one hour that morning (to sell for €1000 or so). He even said the names and addresses he had written on our notepaper might be worth a lot of money when he dies because he is so famous even now. What a joke! If you look up Google for Denis Ribas you will find a bit about him.

Down to the notaire at 4pm, and the propriétaire turned up 10 minutes later, a little the worse for wear. An awkward moment when the notaire asked about fees, and the agent admitted he was taking 11% at which the notaire’s eyebrows shot up, and Monsieur Vargas looked a little confused. However, half an hour and a hundred initials and signatures later, we were the owners of the apartment, pending settlement in 3 months. What a surprise.

Spent half an hour in Carrefour getting groceries for the next week, and back to find Valerie and Lorcan hadn’t yet left, which was very nice. Tomorrow will be a totally free day – we desperately need it after the pressure of the last five days. Such a bonus having V & L’s house and pool to ourselves for a week, and having their help finding our way around the area. We’re now sitting with a little drink or two, having let Alastair know, and waiting for NZ and Melbourne to wake up to let them know.